Day 5 - results

Gotta be consistent! So, 5 days into the program - 5 for 5, 100 minutes of working out today, keeping safe and making sure I work up a sweat! Vball went well, winning 2 out of 3 games - gotta keep pushing hard on my training for Deaflympics!

Day 5 - plan

I've lost track of what day it's supposed to be! Man oh man! What, it's Tuesday? Well, it was supposed to be WRITTEN on Tuesday. Anyone have a time machine I can borrow and go back in time to write this post?

While I'm waiting (how does one wait for a time machine?) it's Day 5 of the exercise plan! I'll be streeeeetching (grrrr shins are botherinyg me again) then playing some vball at the esteemed Tomahawk Ridge - that'll be about 100 mins of exercise today alone. Woot!

Day 4 - results

Whew! The trip to the gym was tough! I normally look forward to a hard workout after a long day, to be able to focus on something simple as push and pull, but Day 4 was just beating me down. I'm just glad I was able to get in some sets on the bench press machine, the pullup bar, do some bicep curls and tricep pulldowns. Kind of light compared to my normal intense workout, as I lightened the weight some, but soon it'll be full weights! Yay! Day 4 down!

Edit: I THOUGHT I didn't post this already, so I made a second post on 5/5/11 and didn't have a chance to review my blog until the following week. Man! In any case, to give more detail, here's my day 4 results:

1) Gym at 630pm after work
2) Clocked in 5,783 steps on my pedometer
3) exercised my upper body for 30 mins - bench, pullups, bicep curls, and tricep pulldowns Feeling it!

Day 4 - plan

So, hump day of the first week of this goal to reach 90 days of working out. Let's see if we can keep up my energy and go the distance!

So, today I'll be at the gym getting pumped on the weights - my usual routine consists of bench press, pullups, curls, lat pulldowns, and some abs all mixed up - we'll at least do the first four exercises as I've already done some serious abs over the past two days. So off I go!

Day 3- results

Day 3 was wild! Got some early morning trekking in checking out random places in Olathe while doing some geocaching! That was pretty fun - my group located 3 out of 3 caches, a big improvement over another outing I heard about....

After that I settled in for some kickass Yoga X - that's some serious business as it's a full hour and a half, with some tough moves to boot! Balancing on one foot for like 5 mins? Yikes! However, it gone all done and now onward to day 4!

Day 3 goal

It's Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! Gonna be a fun day! Am gonna get out and about, and use the pedometer I picked up as part of the Sprint fitness challenge - my goal is to have a minimum of 5,000 steps a day. Right now the "high water mark" set by my team is 15,000+ steps in a day, which is easy peasy as a 5K gave me about 8000+ steps in less than a half hour.

Today, though, I'll settle for some Yoga before din din and really get my mind and body ready for this workweek!

Day 2- results

Did my abs yesterday, man, I need to do those more often! Working out the core is a good reminder about posture - something I start forgetting after numerous hours of sitting in front of the computer at work. Good posture is important!

Onto day 3!

Day 2 - goal

So, exercise goal #2/90 was already set before I even made this post. I happened to sign up for a 5K run to be held on the Saturday morning of 4/30/2011 - and when I say morning, I don't mean at the crack 'o dawn type - this one was at midnight! Yeah, I participated in the Kansas Special Olympics' Midnight 5K run: http://www.ksso.org/events. It was a rough run - on a normal day, no biggie, but I was exhausted from the whole week catching up with me! I took it easy at the beginning and then upped the pace until my shins told me to take a rest - then just coasted on a jog the remainder of the way in. I think I ended up somewhere around 27:30, not too bad.

Anyway, that gave me quite a bit of exercise, so I'm going to add to it by doing some Ab Ripper and rip those obliques. Fun fun!

Day 1 results

Catching up on my posts regarding my exercise plan.

For my first day back into the program, I said I'd at least kick it off with some serious stretching. Mission accomplished!

Uno down, octacontakaiennagon to go!

Day 1 plan - Stretch

Since I'm keeping this simple, my focus will be to blog about what I'm going to do that day, then live up to it. Once it's done, I'll post about my success, and maybe even add a bit about my day and thoughts. Keeping an exercise journal for people to read never seemed very exciting for me, but perhaps I can add to what I'm doing during my days to spice up the content!

So, day 1 of 90 - my goal is to stretch to P90X stretch for one hour - I've got a 5K run early on Saturday, so this'll be to limber me up for that. P90X stretch, while relaxing, does take some time to do right, and sometimes I'll feel the need to rush through things so I can move on to the next on the to-do list! However, as Tony Horton says, I'll need to "clear my mind" and focus on the job at hand.

Off to work I go! TGIF!

Ha, errrr....

Well, this is embarassing. Hello, blog! I haven't written in ya for a bit. It's about time I get back in the typing saddle!

I'm gonna get some writing exercises going. First up, I've been neglecting my workout routine. I had been pretty hardcore about the gym and P90X, but work responsibilities have had me spending my hours elsewhere. So, it's Plan90Extreme (Not to be confused with P90X ;-) ) where I'm gonna do some regular short, varied workout goals to get back into my "gotta work out today" mentality. So by the end of July, I should be reaching my fitness goals!

I'll be numbering my days and stating what workout I'm planning for the day in the morning, then executing that goal by the end of the day. It might be as simple as just stretching, or doing complicated gym routines or yoga. Either way, short and to the point, and then documenting it here will be the way to go!

Tomorrow will be day one. That's always the hardest day. But, heck, Friday's never supposed to be a hard day!

Japan - Part 2

Continuing the chronicles of my adventure from the US to Japan Part 1:

With the flight plan set, I was ready to make the trek across the largest ocean on the planet to visit the land of the Samurai! My itinerary was rather simple - the day after Christmas, I was to br

ave the weather and crowds to park at formerly named Mid-Cont

inental International airport (MCI, or better known as Kansas City International Airport) to head to St. Louis (STL) then onward to Los Angeles (LAX) to crash for the night. On the morning of the 27th, Dad and I would embark on a Boeing 777 to Narita, Japan (NRT), spend a few days in town, then hike back to Narita to enter

the US via Dallas (DFW). Once there, we would part ways - I would head back to KC, while Dad made an extra mileage run from DFW to STL and ending up in LAX. Whew!

A couple of days before taking off, I had the chance to exchange Christmas gifts with Kelly. Being a silly and sly guy, I was able to get some cool UCLA gymnastics swag for her. They're the best college gymnastics team in the nation - and heck, it gives me an excuse to get her to wear UCLA stuff. ;-) She, on the other hand, gave

this the excellent Moleskine journal to use in Tokyo - it's seriously awesome, served as my notes and maps and guide the whole time I was there. I'm definitely using it as my reference writing this blog! Thanks Kel!

The flights linking me to L.A. were uneventful. Waking up in L.A., I was greeted with some excellent views of the airport:

See the light brownish part of the sky above the mount

ains, beneath the blue sky at the top? That's smog. If you had asked me what that was before I left L.A. some almost 10 years ago, I would've told you that's everywhere. Little did I know that it was simply everywhere just in L.A.

We pop into the airport, get past security, and settle in to get on the plane. It's a little delayed, so I watch planes land. It's quiet in the nice lounge we're hanging in:

Right about at noon Pacific time, our plane was ready for takeoff! Stay tuned for the long flight there!

Japan - Part 1

Konichiwa! Err, hello! As long promised since my return to the states, I'm posting my Japan trip in 3 parts to accommodate all the pictures and things that happened on the trip. I'm still grinning from the terrific experience, in no small part for my Dad making this happen pretty much on a whim. Big thanks, Dad!

I've always been fascinated with Japanese culture, language, mannerisms, geography, and history. I think it stems from a couple of things - in my lifetime, the Japanese have been considered leaders in technology and innovation - things that interest me greatly both professionally and personally - their history is pretty well documented yet heavily influenced by Western culture lately - especially notable was the arrival of the US "Great White Fleet" in 1908 where the Japanese went to great lengths to welcome Americans - and my Dad has made annual trips there for work, but tended to take my older brother to other locations, such as Hawaii or Europe. So Japan was kind of a special place that I really wanted to visit and make my own.

A couple of months ago, I jokingly asked my Dad if he was planning another "mileage run" to Japan. You see, even though he travels somewhat often to international locations, he has been cutting back on work travel during the year, to the point where he ends up close to but not quite having the required number of qualifying miles for "Elite" status on American Airlines, which has been his preferred airline for many many years. The point of keeping that prestigious frequent flyer level are the numerous benefits: free class upgrades; mileage bonuses; priority upgrades to business or first class when available (with platinum or gold, you have to wait for the elites to get their upgrades first, then whatever is leftover becomes available); waived charges for changing travel plans; even an expanded seating selection at no extra charge. All you have to do is keep flying 100,000 miles a year on the airline.

Isn't that an easy thing to do? well, to give you some perspective - flying from Los Angeles to New York City is 2,462 miles as the crow flies, and takes about 5-6 hours. 100,000 miles means you need 40 flights or 20 round trips - each flight is 5-6 hours long, so that'd be some 200-240 hours in the air. That's a LOT. I can barely take the 13 hours from L.A. to Tokyo, and I LIKE flying!

So, back to the story. Mileage runs - since my Dad needs 100,000 miles a year to stay "Elite," he needed to take one more big trip to put him over the mark. It takes about 4 international trips to make it easy to get Elite, and for the past couple of years he's had to take one flight at the end of the year as far as possible as fast as possible to reach 100K. Tokyo's easy - go from LAX to DFW (Dallas, TX) to NRT (Tokyo/Narita Airport, Japan) and back is a cool 1,230 + 5,500 + 5,500 + 1,230 = 13,500 miles. So, if you're 10-15K miles away from Elite status, there's how you get over the hump - take a day to fly to Tokyo, spend a night there, and then fly back. My Dad sleeps on planes - in fact, it's a game to him to try to be asleep before the flight takes off. He'll wake for the first meal, watch a movie, then be back under for the rest of the way.

I bugged him this year to join him - it'd be an adventure for me and maybe make the trip less boring for him. So we planned to fly out on the 27th from LAX and be back in KC in time for the new year.

I'll stop here for the night and resume tomorrow!

Back in Kansas

Whoo-hoo! Am typing up my posts as we speak!

Short post

Just making a short post before I leave the country - looking to see a bit of Japan before the new year hits! If you want to read some excellent deaf news about Japan, check out the Deaf Japan News blog here: http://deafjapan.blogspot.com

Catch you all when I return!